Deadline reports that two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs) has signed on to direct and star in an English adaptation of the Icelandic film Woman at War. The feature is the country’s entry for Best Foreign Film at The Academy Awards.
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Foster will star in the lead role of Halla, a middle-aged music teacher who in secret works towards disrupting the aluminum plant in the Icelandic highlands by damaging pylons and disrupting its power supply. But as her war begins to escalate and the government begins an active campaign of propaganda and police patrols to capture her, Halla’s world is flipped upside down when she receives a letter informing her that her application to adopt a child has finally been approved and that a baby is ready for her in Ukraine, and she must decide whether to give up her activist ways or keep pushing for her message to be heard.
“This movie thrilled me beyond words,” Foster said of the original film. “I am so excited to helm a new American imagining of this relevant, beautiful, inspiring story. The character of Halla is a warrior for the planet, a strong woman who risks it all to do the right thing. But not without some serious mishaps along the way.”
The original comedy-drama-thriller, which was co-written by Benedikt Erlingsson and Ólafur Egill Egilsson and directed by Erlingsson, premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and received rave reviews, winning the award for best script from the Critics’ Week section, and had a release in Iceland on May 22 while only showing stateside across various film festivals including the Miami and Chicago film festivals.
While Foster did reveal she would be shifting the location of the story from the Icelandic highlands to somewhere in the American west, she did not reveal when she would begin working on the project.
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“I can’t wait to play her,” Foster said. “I’m always drawn to a bold and quirky mixture of humor and emotion. This one speaks for our time. It is an honor to take the reins from the talented director Benedikt Erlingsson and his producing partner Marianne Slot.”
Woman at War will mark Foster’s fifth theatrical directorial effort, with the most recent being the thriller Money Monster starring George Clooney (Catch-22) in 2016, while also having directed the fourth season episode “Arkangel” of the acclaimed anthology series Black Mirror.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
